Sanity Is Relative
by Whilom
Summary: AU. Dean goes a little crazy after Sam goes to Hell.


**Sanity Is Relative** by Whilom

He stares into his coffee cup until Lisa puts a hand on his arm and asks, "Everything okay?" He must have nodded because she turns away to scoop scrambled eggs on Ben's plate although the concerned look on her face only deepens. When she's not looking, he pours the coffee down the sink.

He wonders when everything started tasting like blood.

00000

He doesn't drive the Impala anymore.

Lisa asked him to take Ben for a spin in it once, probably thinking that the fresh air and a little AC/DC would help him loosen up. When she picked them up at the hospital, she held Ben to her chest for a long time, even though he only had a scraped elbow, and wouldn't look at Dean. He had to ask to come home with them that night and he slept on the couch with an icepack for his concussion.

He didn't tell Lisa that the whine of the Impala's doors was Hellhounds hungry for some meat, the rumble of the engine was machinery enough to tear him apart, the steering wheel under his hands was something to brace against when they flayed the skin from his back.

He didn't tell her that he'd seen Sam, huddled on the side of the road, bleeding. After all, they'd only ended up in a ditch, and none of them were in tatters like Sam.

00000

He sleeps sitting up.

It's not likely that Sam's lying down. Sam probably doesn't even get to sleep. Sam has to listen to voices all day, voices from the demons outside, the voice of Lucifer inside.

If he's hasn't been ripped apart yet.

Dean falls asleep with a comfortable pillow under his head after Lisa apologizes for her harsh words and tells him he can sleep in the guest room again, if he wants. He'd love to sleep in the guest room. He'd love to sleep.

Sam would love to sleep.

Dean falls asleep with a comfortable pillow under his head and wakes up to the echo of nightmares, feeling like he's been chained to the rack.

He wonders if Sam even gets a rack.

00000

Thursday is Ben's soccer game and he's so excited that he ran around the house all morning with his cleats on even though Lisa told him a hundred times that he'd ruin the floors. The smell of cut grass is heavy in the air, parents are milling on the sidelines with their lawn chairs and sunglasses, and the sky is bright overhead. Lisa seems happy to have him around and Ben gives him a thumbs-up during the huddle, which Dean returns.

He isn't sure how he ends up in the middle of the field, clutching the soccer ball to his stomach and screaming obscenities at anyone who comes near, but he does.

"Sam's not here," Lisa says firmly, her mouth pressed in a thin line, the one face he knows in the anxious crowd.

"I know that," he croaks, the grass making his eyes water. "I know."

"Dean, I don't know what to do with you," she hisses and suddenly he remembers demons flying back and forth, kicking and scrabbling at Sam, crumpled helplessly on the ground. For one moment, he'd been holding Sam's head, determined to at least keep a part of Sam since everyone else wanted him to themselves.

He lets go of the soccer ball and vomits on the field.

No one plays soccer that day.

00000

He doesn't try to stay at Lisa's anymore. He lies on a bench near the playground at night, sits on it during the day. Slowly, parents stop bringing their kids to play there, and cops make it a regular stop, _time to tell the crazy he can't stay here._

Sometimes he wonders who they're talking about.

The rest of the time he's too busy looking at Sam hung in the chains on the swing set, wishing that Sam's eyes didn't roll so horribly and that when Sam screamed things they were words.

00000

Someone gives him five dollars and he walks to a diner and sits at the counter. He points at the first thing on the menu, glad that no one sits with him. He can't bear the smell of sulfur coming off their breath.

The cook is breaking oval bones, cracking them and letting the marrow slide out to sizzle with slices of muscle in a pan. Someone to his right is drinking blood and laughing at a crossword puzzle. A mother is slicing up a finger into neat chunks, each _snick_ of her knife sliding through the joints.

The finger looks like Sam's.

The waitress puts a heavy plate in front of him, tells him to eat up, he looks like he needs it. He lifts up the plate and throws it across the diner. They can torture Sam, but they can't make him be a part of it.

00000

Dean wakes up in a prison cell, bars from floor to ceiling and a guard to boot.

"My brother's in a cage," he tells the guard.

"He as crazy as you?" The guard chuckles. "Better get comfortable. You're going to be in there a long time."

"Can you keep me here forever?"

Sam wails from his cage, locked in Hell, locked out of his mind.

"I want to stay with Sam."

00000

"This won't hurt too much. Just hold still."

He looks down at the small prick of a needle in his arm, realizing where he is with detached clarity. White walls. A bed with cuffs. Funny farm.

"We're going to get you set up in your room, now, Dean. Alright? Lie back here and close your eyes for a minute, and we'll wake you when we're ready."

Dark wings flap at the edges of his vision, shadowy and edged in steel. Those wings will cut you if you look too closely, shave the skin right off your face. Sam looks like he's smiling, but it's because his cheeks got too close to the wings. Sam's sobbing with great ragged breaths but Dean can see all his teeth.

He swings out, catching someone in the stomach before they press down on his arms, buckling cuffs to his wrists and ankles. He bites at someone's hand and hears a curse. Something slaps across his face, catching him in the mouth.

He wonders when everything started tasting like blood.

00000

His voice is wrecked. It takes a while to move the words around in his mouth, spitting them out like gravel and lining them up so they make sense.

Probably hasn't been a lot of that around lately.

Someone comes in, head to toe white, and swabs something sharp-smelling on his arm. Hope flares up, tight and real, in his chest when he hears the words _over soon_.

He wets his lips and tries the words again, sure he's gotten the order right this time.

"Can I see Sam now?"


End file.
